We graduated from Horton College, Fiona and I, starry-eyed and ready for the wave of upward mobility that everyone had promised us. A few months later, I was at Stanford, and Fiona was dead.

I still can’t say with certainty what made Thorpe take me into her office less than a month ago and have her ‘discussion’, basically letting me know that my one year of teaching at Horton was all there was going to be. She talked about ‘fit’. Granted, there had been a few… episodes, in the recent months. There were things she didn’t know about, things I couldn’t possibly tell her, and as a result I’m sure my behavior had been a little off. And I know that my teaching methods hadn’t been to everybody’s tastes. Thorpe had failed to warn me that some of the Horton parents were highly religious, and that my reading list was too provocative for some of them to tolerate. Never mind ‘the customer is always right’: at Horton, it was the parents who were always right. We’re not really teachers, my colleague Simone, the history teacher, had said wryly to me one day. Basically we’re customer service reps.

Or maybe it wasn’t my reading list. Maybe it was that despite my résumé, despite my Stanford degree, despite my years abroad, my accent still wasn’t quite a ‘fit’, just like it hadn’t been a fit when I was a scholarship girl.

But I still didn’t expect to be let go just a few weeks into the new year. They couldn’t fire me outright, not without proper legal standing. But a ‘discussion’ with Thorpe only goes one way - hers.

The doctor’s door swings open and the receptionist comes out.

‘Mrs Gonzalez?’

The woman across from me snaps the phone from her son’s hand and ushers him in front of her through to the examining room. The door closes again and the receptionist resumes her place at the desk. Surreptitiously, I take my phone from my pocket and check it. It’s stupid that I’m acting so secretive about it. It’s stupid that I’m checking it at all - deep down, I know all I’ll see is a blank screen. But some part of me is still waiting. It’s been weeks. Everything in me itches to text that number - one more time, my brain urges, just one more time - but I swallow, and slip the phone back in my pocket.

‘Would you like a glass of water, Miss Kelly?’ the receptionist chirps.

‘Oh, um. Sure. Thank you,’ I say, because she’s smiling so brightly that I feel I ought to accept.